التصنيف: أخبار

A former member of a disbanded militant group linked to robberies and attempted murder has been arrested in Germany after more than 30 years on the run.

Daniela Klette, 65, offered no resistance as she was detained in a Berlin flat on Monday evening, said Friedo de Vries, head of the criminal investigation department in Lower Saxony.

Klette was found alone and police also seized a pistol, two magazines and cartridges in the apartment block in the Kreuzberg district of the capital.

Ms de Vries also said there had been a second arrest in Berlin, but the person’s identity had not yet been confirmed.

Klette was later taken by helicopter to a jail in the northern German city of Bremen.

She was a member of the left-wing Red Army Faction (RAF), whose violent campaign against what it said was US imperialism and capitalist oppression of workers, left 34 people dead and hundreds more injured.

Police have been hunting her for years, along with her former colleagues, Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg, who were all put on Europol’s Europe’s Most Wanted list in 2020.

Authorities stepped up their efforts to detain the fugitives after receiving a tip-off from the public in November.

That led to an appeal on a popular TV crime show two weeks ago, which brought in 250 further tips that police are still working through.

The trio have been linked to at least 12 robberies in northern Germany between 1999 and 2016 and are also wanted for attempted murder.

Their alleged heists were carried out to raise funds, rather than for political motives, authorities believe.

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The Red Army Faction emerged from German student protests against the Vietnam War, but declared itself disbanded in 1998.

The group was behind the 1993 bombing of a newly-built prison in Darmstadt, south of Frankfurt. No one was injured in the attack which was the RAF’s last major act before it dissolved.

A tourist helicopter in Colombia crashed into a building moments after taking off – but all six people on board survived, according to reports.

The aircraft was carrying two pilots and four passengers when the incident took place amid strong winds in Medellín, Colombia, on Monday night.

Within seconds of being in the air, the helicopter began spinning out of control and plummeted back down towards the helipad on top of a building below.

Pictures taken after the passengers were rescued show the wreckage of the helicopter wedged between the building and a communications antenna.

What remained of the aircraft was safely removed once the rescue had taken place.

Over 70 emergency workers took part in the rescue, local media said, and it took an hour and a half to free the passengers.

El Colombiano added that while the pilot sustained a broken leg and lacerations to his body, the other five people were left with minor injuries that did not require hospital treatment.

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It’s believed the tourists had booked a package deal which included a 12 to 15-minute flight over Medellín and drinks at the aviation-themed Hangar M45 bar, which the helipad is on top of.

The trips have been postponed indefinitely in light of the accident and authorities are reportedly investigating what caused it.

Oleg Orlov has spent his life documenting repression.

He is co-chair of Russia’s oldest human rights group, Memorial, which was shut down and forced out of Russia shortly before the Ukraine war and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

Mr Orlov vowed to continue his human rights work inside the country, holding single pickets against the war and continuing to speak out against the Russian state which he likened to the regimes of Franco, Salazar or Mussolini.

Now, at 70 years old, he has been jailed for two and a half years for supposedly “repeatedly” criticising the armed forces.

In his closing statement at a court in Moscow, Mr Orlov said he did not regret or repent. He described the court process as Kafkaesque, “absurdity and tyranny dressed up as formal adherence to some pseudo-legal procedures”.

As for those working within the state’s legal and administrative bureaucracy, he had this to say. “Their children or grandchildren will be ashamed to talk about where their fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers worked and what they did. Same will happen to those who, in carrying out orders, are committing crimes in Ukraine. In my view, this is the worst punishment. And it is inevitable.”

His supporters crowded the corridors, cheering and clapping as this slight, white-haired man was marched past in handcuffs.

His sentencing comes on the ninth anniversary of the assassination of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was shot outside the Kremlin in 2015. Over the years, volunteers who have guarded the site have been threatened, detained and one so badly beaten he later died. After the death of Alexei Navalny, men in balaclavas were filmed removing flowers from the site and throwing them into bin liners. Today just the police stood guard.

But people still came to pay their respects, some of them in tears. “He was a man of great mind. I hope if I have children I will tell them who Boris Nemtsov was,” Mila said. “Unfortunately our country doesn’t need people like that.”

I asked another woman what he meant to her. “My youth and my hopes,” she said drily.

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Not far up the road, past St Basil’s Cathedral and east towards the Kremlin administration, there is another memorial. This one is to Wagner fighters. The flowers here do not get removed and the fake red carnations ensure there is always a flash of colour. This is where you meet supporters of the other Russia, the Putinist pro-war camp.

“Boris Nemtsov wanted to ruin our country,” said a woman I spoke to there. “What does he have to do with this?”

I asked her what she thought of Alexei Navalny.

“He wasn’t fighting for freedom, he fought for there to be no Russia,” she replied and gestured at the memorial, adding: “These guys, they fought for Russia to exist.”